In today’s world, the only constant is change, and Medical colleges need to reinvent themselves , so we can give young , intelligent, technically-savvy medical students an opportunity to come up with innovative solutions , which will allow them to take better care of their patients.
We need to upgrade medical education to create a new generation of doctors. This is why the Medical Innovation Creativity and Entrepreneurship Lab was launched on Sept 5 ( Teacher’s Day) at J J Hospital. This is a hands-on Tinkering Lab, which will encourage doctors and medical students to do things with their own hands, so they can create solutions to indigenous problems . This is the first lab of its kind in the country which is embedded in a medical college.
The lab has been funded by Dr Aniruddha and Anjali Malpani, and is a joint PPP of the Maharashtra Government to improve health care.
The lab allows for cross-disciplinary collaboration. Medical students will talk to engineers, psychologists, sociologists, senior doctors, patients and designers under one roof, so that perspectives from different fields could be blended together to create brand new solutions which are co-created for Indian conditions.
This lab provides senior doctors with a platform, so they have an opportunity to see some of their ideas and innovations come to light. Doctors understand the pain points of patients, so that the solutions they create will be practical and feasible, and can be implemented easily in India.
The lab encourages critical thinking and
Frugal Innovation. Medical students are our future and the lab will help them to become future ready. Forcing medical students to cram facts and regurgitate them is obsolete – we need to teach them to think, learn and tinker.